SILVER AND GOLD 



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Doorway of the 
Stamford Trust Company 



SILVER AND 
GOLD 



By 

LOUISE WILLIS SNEAD 

JVith Illustrations from the Author's Sketch Book. 



Stamford, Connecticut 
One Thousand, Nine Hundred and Sixteen 






Copyright 1916 

by the 

Stamford trust Company 



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-2 1317 






©CI,A453577 



DEDICATION 

npO the People of Stamford, to whose 

^ inte§:rity, industry and thrift, the 

Stamford Trust Company owes what 

measure of success it has attained, this 

Book is dedicated. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Grateful acknowledgment is hereby made by the 

author for material acquired from 

the following: 

Picturesque Stamford, by Edward T. W. Gillespie 

History of Stamford, Connecticut, by Rev. E. B. Huntington 

Story of American Currency, by Willian G. Sumner 

History of Money in the British Empire and the United States, 
by A. F. Dodd 

History of United States Mint and Coinage, by Geo. G. Evans 

Principles of Economics, by Taussig 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Doorway of the Stamford Trust Co. 



Old Map of the Square 



Pastor Bishop's Home, 1644 



Webb's Tavern 



Facing 
Frontispiece 

13 

24 

26 



Pine Tree Shilling . 



New England Token 



Connecticut Cent 



A Colonists' Homestead 



First Home of the Stamford Trust Co, 



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SILVER and GOLD 

^HINK of midnight and starlight and 
a silver mist like a wraith rising over 
the Sound! The world lies dreaming 
in sleep while we sit dreaming 
■^M awake, in silvern retrospection 
,^ and golden prospects; dreaming 
of life, the times and affairs! A 
silver-toned bell chimes the hour and makes us 
aware of time; and ''we take no thought of time 
but in its flight," therefore must man mark its 
decades with ceremonials. 

Twenty-five years ago Stamford was cele- 
brating her Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniver- 
sary, when the dawn of the golden era of her great 
prosperity brought into being the Stamford Trust 
Company. To-day Stamford is rejoicing in her 
Two Hundred and Seventy-Fifth Anniversary, and 
the Trust Company commemorates a quarter- 
century of progress. While Stamford points to 
eleven quarter-centuries and the Trust Company 
to but one, still it is a matter of congratulation that 
they will always celebrate coincidentally and 
mutually; and such celebrations have been defined 
as "festivals of thanksgiving to Almighty God for 

13 



past glory and for present prosperity." Twenty- 
five years! A silver anniversary! It seems but 
yesterday as the heart's perennial youth counts 
time, and yet a generation by the law; still, count- 
ing time as the crowding thoughts replace each 
other in the mind, it might have been twenty-five 
centuries ago, when you and I and love and all the 
world were young. Then as now, the moon, like 
a silver sickle, gleaned among the stars. Kingdoms 
have waxed and waned like the moon; but man, 
primitive man, before this stupendous, complex, 
thing called civilization was evolved, was he freer, 
happier, better? His treasure, his business, his 
barter! What did he do? What did he love? Did 
he dream by the sea? Did he toil, struggle and 
save ? Aye, but what and for whom ? Did he value 
the pearls with the soft silvery shimmer which he 
toyed with by the shore? Was the ruby to him 
more than the color of blood? And what of the 
bright yellow nuggets he found in the cave? Per- 
chance they had no value to him until another 
wanted them. Then were born the command- 
ments, 'Thou shalt not covet" and 'Thou shalt 
not steal." What then? He must hide his treas- 
ures or lose them. There was but one safety vault 
in the dawn of material history, and that was the 



14 



ground ! Out of the earth came the treasures and 
back to the earth it inevitably went. What one 
generation acquired, was oft times buried from the 
next. But think of it ! All the treasure of the world 
is still here! The most ancient standards of wealth 
were measured by gold and silver and precious 
stones — substances deemed indestructible in a 
world of seeming change and decay. The jewels of 
Croesus are somewhere; the gold of Midas was not 
taken with him; the silver coin outlives Caesar. 
Thought is startled to contemplate, that of all the 
wealth of Maji or Maharajah, Caliph, pirate or 
potentate not a rupee has ever left the earth! It is 
all here still, and it is the opportunity of one gene- 
ration to unearth the buried treasures of its prede- 
cessor. How many silver moons have waned since 
Captain Kidd stealthily buried his ancient coif ers of 
Spanish silver beneath Shippan's golden sands, his 
spoil of the treasure that Spain acquired from the 
temples of Mexico and Peru? And did you know 
that the Indians had a cave on Shippan's bulkhead, 
only obliterated in recent years by blasting? 

Can thought conceive of a time when men 
were not segregated in groups for community life ? 
Even when their wants were of the simplest, and 
barter the only means of trade, it must inevitably 

15 



have happened that a fixed standard developed, 
and it is curious to reflect that in different countries 
the standard of measurement varied from two 
ephas of corn to a yoke of oxen. And just fancy all 
the commodities that have served for currency! 
Tin passed in ancient Britain, iron in Sparta, cattle 
in Rome, platinum in Russia, lead in Burmah, nails 
in old Scotland, silk in China, cubes of pressed tea 
in Tartary, salt in Abyssinia and wampum or clam 
shells among our aborigines and our pioneer 
patriots. 

And while we dream by the sea, as through 
the silver mist, thought reverts down the dream of 
years to old Stamford, England, when the Feudal 
dues were replaced by money taxes and the un- 
happy restraint of a court religion grew intolerable 
to minds that could think for themselves; and we 
honor the courageous hearts that dared provoke 
human displeasure for the sake of higher convic- 
tions; and we glory in the zeal and sacrifice that 
brought the Pilgrims and Puritans across the un- 
tried seas, abandoning all for the high and holy aim 
of freedom to worship as conscience impelled. On 
July 3 0th, 1630, forty Puritans who had recently 
landed in America organized a church at Water- 
town, Massachusetts, claimed to be the first in 

16 



America, on a strictly congregational basis, being 
the first to choose and ordain its own minister. In 
1635 six members removed to the Connecticut 
River Valley and located at Wethersfield and estab- 
lished the first church organized and located on 
Connecticut soil. ''Unhappy animosities and dis- 
sensions" caused a number of them to apply for 
redress to the New Haven Colony which solved the 
difficulty by offering the faction a new territory 
known as Toquams, on the Rippowam River, 
secured some years before from the Indian Saga- 
mores, Ponus and Wascussue by Captain Turner. 
When the land which comprised the new planta- 
tion was purchased, not a dollar or a shilling passed. 
It was bartered for a few jackknives and beads. 
The land to-day computed in terms of dollars would 
stagger a financier. Retrospective gleams of local 
history have set the date when the men of Wethers- 
field came to claim their respective parcels of land 
as May l6th, 1641, which has become a Gold Letter 
Day in Stamford's calendar known as Settlers' Day. 
The Reverend Richard Denton came with them as 
their religious teacher. The settlers in turn paid 
each for his holdings with the products of the soil; 
silver and gold had they none. There was very 
little money in any of the colonies. The most 



17 



serious objection that England made to the emigra- 
tion was the fear that some currency would be 
taken out of England, but the sturdy pioneers 
brought little besides their Bibles. It was faith in 
the right, justice and integrity which laid the foun- 
dations of Stamford's institutions and fortunes. 
The enterprising spirits built at once a gristmill for 
the common welfare, at the town's charge, but 
within a year they were all assessed again to rebuild 
the dam which the spring freshets had destroyed. 
This time, however, their solid masonry lasted for 
one hundred and fifty years. They built log cab- 
ins to receive their women and children, who came 
in little companies during the summer. They built 
their rude temple and altar in the new wilderness, 
which was the center of activity for the commu- 
nity life. Then they turned their attention to agri- 
culture and boat building. 

The crops in England having failed in 1630, 
and as yet no crops having been raised in the new 
world, ''famine prices" were paid for grain in the 
colonies, and paid in real money, namely fourteen 
shillings per bushel for wheat, and ten shillings for 
peas; Indian corn from Virginia was ten shillings. 
A cow was worth £25 to £30. Money was so scarce 
that Winthrop wrote to his son to bring him from 



England £l5o to £200. Through all these events 
the money question was a serious one. To show 
what straits people of those times were put to for 
currency, in 1642 when Stamford was but a year 
old, we recall that Charles I was making his famous 
"siege pieces" with hammer and anvil on the very 
field of encampment, out of such family plate as 
his faithful followers would bring to him. One of 
these "siege pieces" in our Philadelphia Mint is the 
largest silver coin known, and is one pound sterling. 
Charles Stuart's extremity is proclaimed in the 
rudely inscribed legend, "Let God arise; let his 
enemies be scattered!" 

When the Pilgrims and Puritans needed a 
medium of exchange they fell to using the Indian's 
wampum. These were black and white beads made 
from clam or mussel shells, polished until they were 
ornamental enough to have the intrinsic value of 
articles of adornment, such as jewelry. One black 
bead was worth two white ones. It was soon made 
legal tender by the colonists and became the pre- 
vailing currency. If an Indian had any enterprise, 
he spent all the time that he was not fishing or 
gaming, carving wampum, but the white man had 
superior tools and greater enterprise and the inge- 
nuity which was later to clip silver money into five 



19 



quarters and carve counterfeit nutmegs, actually 
out-wampumed the Indians, and the country began 
to be flooded with wampum. A belt consisted of 
360 beads and was called a fathom. A fathom of 
white beads would buy furs worth five shillings 
sterling. A fathom of black beads would buy furs 
worth ten shillings; therefore the following table 
was agreed upon : 

''360 white beads = 60 pence. 
6 white beads = 1 penny. 

360 black beads = 120 pence. 
3 black beads = 1 penny." 

Connecticut tax payers used wampum until 1649, 
when it was refused in payment for taxes on ac- 
count of having been cheapened by over produc- 
tion. 

The Indian name Toquams was not accept- 
able to our English forebears, so they agreed to 
rename the settlement with a Christian name, and 
we may be sure it was a deep sentiment that called 
forth the names of their old English home towns, 
Ayreshire and Stamforde. Tradition insists that the 
sporting element produced two fighting cocks, 
naming one Ayreshire, and the other Stamforde; 
that they were put into the pit in front of "ye meet- 



20 



ing house," and that the stakes ran high; and fur- 
thermore that after a bloody fight to the finish, 
Stamforde won. To the new Stamforde came 
many artisans and adventurers, for new comers 
were constantly joining the community. Between 
1630 and 1640, twenty-two thousand people came 
over to America. We catch the first hint of the 
Labor Union when "ye meeting" had the wisdom 
to regulate prices of labor, and forbade carpenters, 
joiners, bricklayers and sawyers to take over twelve 
pence (and in later times over twenty-five pence), 
per day for their services. The penalty for the first 
offense was to be ten shillings "to the giver and ten 
shillings to the taker;" and our sympathies go out 
to poor Edward Palmer, whose name appears on the 
town records as having been found guilty of extor- 
tion in over charging for woodwork, and was fined 
£5 and condemned to sit in the stocks all day! If 
these old Blue Laws held good today very few 
woodworkers would be out of the stocks. As fur- 
ther interesting values of the times we note that 
beaver skins were worth ten shillings per pound, 
Rhode Island wool, ten shillings per pound, while 
Virginia tobacco. South Carolina rice and sugar, 
rum and indigo were "as good as gold." Magistrates 
received three shillings six pence, and deputies six 



21 



pence per day. Married clergymen were at first 
paid £30 per year out of the Town Treasury, for 
evidently the support of the spiritual leader appears 
to have been the paramount civic obligation. By 
1680 the town was affluent enough to record, "The 
town doth grant unto ye ministry £6o for the pres- 
ent year; one-third part in wheat, one-third part in 
pork, one-third part in Indian corn; winter wheat 
five shillings per bushel, summer wheat four shill- 
ing six pence, and pork at three and a quarter pence 
per pound, all good and merchantable, and Indian 
corn two shillings six pence per bushel." And 
again, as evidence of increasing prosperity, a later 
record states, "Ye towne doth ingage to furnish ye 
pasinedge house, fence in the lot, digge a well, plant 
an orchard and give it to Mr. John Davenport when 
he is a settled minister in Stamford; and £100 per 
year; and the town do now farther order that every 
inhabitant of this town shall cut and carry to Mr. 
Davenport for his use, a good ox load of good wood 
to be done by the last of November annually, upon 
the penalty of the forfeiture of four shillings to be 
paid to the town by the person neglecting his duty 
herein." But an entry of 1693 states that "an un- 
steady currency was the occasion of much trouble 
between pastor and people," and a committee was 



22 



chosen to "discourse with him relative to his sal- 
lory." One can't get away from the fact that Stam- 
ford was founded as a religious center. No man 
was allowed to vote at town meetings who was not 
a church member of good standing and even with 
the ensuing years when Stamford was expanding, 
the requirements for an outlying district to become 
a separate town was its financial ability and will- 
ingness to call and pay a minister. Indeed the 
Legislature of Connecticut had decided that the 
only condition upon which Horseneck (Green- 
wich) could become a township, "entire of itself," 
was that it immediately procure and support an 
orthodox minister. Stamford town was taxed to 
support the minister of the Congregational Church, 
the first-born church in Connecticut, from 1641 
down to 1835, when so many other denominations 
were then represented in the community that the 
congregation met the obligation of the pastor's sal- 
ary by subscription. 

Reminiscing on the silver thread of Stam- 
ford's early romance, in fancy we can see Captain 
John Underbill's old fashioned brig putting into 
Stamford waters, marking an exciting event for the 
handful of settlers. He was the first man to make 
the perilous voyage from Boston on the untried 



23 



waters of the Sound and the quaint craft sailed in 
through the Rippowam River. Already this typi- 
cal filibuster was receiving a pension of £30 as a 
national defender, and zealous for public safety, we 
find him instigating a fearful massacre of the In- 
dians at North Mianus. Later, his restless spirit 
induced Pastor Denton and a few discontented 
parishioners to remove to Long Island. The colony 
could exist without specie but not without a spirit- 
ual mentor; so two sturdy young pioneers volun- 
teered to walk to Boston to bring back a pastor, and 
we have a vivid picture of the times, in the town 
congregated in the little village green in front of 
''ye meeting house," of course, welcoming them 
home and receiving Pastor Bishop who carried his 
''Bible box" under his arm. We imagine the quaint 
Cromwellian breeches and jerkins, the round col- 
lars, broad brimmed hats, the hose and buckled shoes 
of the men, and the full skirts and bodices with 
kerchief and cap of the women. The site of the 
home that sheltered Pastor Bishop was destined 
two hundred and fifty years later to become the first 
home of The Stamford Trust Company and it is 
interesting to note that this spot was the corner of 
Main and Atlantic Streets, opposite the Town Hall. 
The routine of labor and duty, questions of money 



24 





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Pastor Bishop's 
Home, 1644 



and markets, were often broken by tragic occur- 
rences. The Dutch neighbors down the road used 
to give the little community no end of trouble, with 
such scenes as a hand-to-hand combat in our streets 
between old Chief Myanos (for whom the river and 
district were named) and three pugnacious Dutch 
soldiers excited with rum; in the uneven struggle 
the old chief fell stabbed to death. Nor was it 
many moons later, when Captain Patrick, the 
pioneer settler of Greenwich, was shot to death in 
Stamford streets by a Dutch soldier. It is not likely 
that the Indians overlooked the murder of their 
chief and troublous times ensued. We who retire 
at night to rest, with a sense of peace and protec- 
tion, can never know the terror of Indian massacres 
which were happening all around other sections; 
and while Stamford was peculiarly immune, there 
are instances of revenge such as the legend that a 
Wethersfield man was pursued with murderous in- 
tent by a band of Indians and in the golden light of 
a harvest moon plunged to death with his steed over 
Laddin's awful rock, preferring death to torture. 

The men of Stamford were quick to take 
hold of the Indian's corn and potatoes, beans, 
squashes and pumpkins, and turn them into money. 
Potatoes were raised from seed then, but so mate- 

25 



rially has the process of planting changed, that 
to-day potato seeds are worth $26 a thimble full. 
.Stamford spells progress and the renown which 
their potatoes gained in New Amsterdam and 
Harlem markets, is not lost to this generation, 
for even to-day the "Noroton Beauty" perpet- 
uates the excellence which the forefathers won 
for Stamford potatoes in the world of trade. 
Noroton was a part of Stamford until 1820, when 
the land east of Noroton River was incorporated as 
Darien. The original pretty word "Noro-tan" is of 
Indian origin and means North Star. In the old 
days the civic affairs were regulated with quaint 
offices and officers. There was the lusty town crier, 
whose exciting announcements from ''ye turret" of 
ye Towne House never failed to bring every dame 
to her front door; there were the night watchman, 
the peddler, the ministrel; the stocks and the whip- 
ping post for discipline; the doctor who gave nause- 
ous physic in phials or bled his victim with leeches; 
the magistrate who ''rescued your estate from your 
enemy and kept it for himself;" the military train- 
ing bands, where every lad over sixteen must be 
Impressed for drill in the village center; the weekly 
advent of the lumbering stage coach with its divert- 
ing travelers brim full of news from the outside 

26 



V,.-' ..' 




Webb's 
Tavern 



world, and precious mail packets, perhaps from the 
mother country. Thought dwells upon the episto- 
lary triumphs of those long quiet days — the ex- 
quisitely penned literary recitals of the times, neatly 
folded and sealed with wax — a beautiful art made 
obsolete by the telegraph, telephone and typewriter. 
Nor can we forget the adorable valentines with 
their patiently wrought hearts and darts and loves 
and doves, in the dear, delightful stippling of a by- 
gone century, the colors bespeaking ingenious 
home-made dyes of poke berries and walnut bark. 
We also recall from oblivion the Town post where 
marriage bans were posted; and seem to see again 
the portly town clerk ringing a bell when a heifer 
or a child was lost, and beating a "drom" to call 
for help in times of fire; we wonder if the ducking- 
stool really made a good-wife hold her tongue, or 
how a debtor could repay when cast into prison; 
but still more we marvel that superstition played 
such queer pranks with this level-headed English 
stock of hard common sense as to induce the grim 
belief in witchcraft, with a gallows for the offender. 
However, concerning such blots on Stamford's his- 
tory, if speech is silvern, silence is golden. As a 
picturesque sidelight on the thrift of the times, let 
us rather contemplate ''the hum of the reel and the 

27 



spinning wheel, relics of old time womanhood," 
when the Colonial dame, unspoiled by luxury, or- 
dered her household with a master-hand. 

As everything that touched the mother 
country was of the deepest import to the colonists, 
they learned of James II between the years 1684 
and 1688, distributing to the poor, little bags of 
"Maundy money," small coins, as many as he was 
years old; but to make up for this generosity he 
was enterprising enough to refill his coffers with 
''gun money" made out of the old cannon, after the 
Irish Rebellion. 

As years rolled into decades and our thrifty 
ancestors accumulated their competencies, what did 
they do with their money? What would we do 
had we no banks or safety vaults? They hid it or 
buried it, of course, in a hollow tree or the ash 
hopper or in the ground in an earthen pot or a 
leathern pouch. Some, wiser than their genera- 
tion, made secret panels in the walls or cubby holes 
in the great chimney-breast, and even today it is 
not unusual in demolishing some colonial home- 
stead, to come upon a jar of old English and Spanish 
money between floors or in the walls; the cabi- 
net maker has sometimes uncovered such treasure 
in the seat of an old arm chair or the recesses of the 

28 



grandfather's clock. Many an excavation for cellar 
or well has brought to light a curious coffer of for- 
eign craft, filled with corroded coins buried for safe 
keeping, yet lost! During troublous times the 
neighbors all betook their valuables to Deacon 
Joseph Mather at Middlesex (then part of Stamford) 
and during his absence a band of ruffians drove 
good-wife Mather to the secret hiding place at the 
point of the bayonet and took all the spoils relent- 
lessly. Again we muse that treasure is not always 
in silver and gold. Miss Holly, aged five years, 
daughter of Captain John Holly of Clark's Hill, 
was presented with a handsomely bound Bible for 
attainments in scriptural lore. This Bible was also 
buried in the ''back yard" for safe keeping and re- 
mained safely (?) until all the clasps and hinges 
had rusted away! Another evidence that the Bible 
comprised the chief treasure, is given in the inci- 
dent concerning Abed Scofield's copy known as 
Scott's Bible. The official collector for church 
taxes was empowered to seize and sell any article 
belonging to a delinquent, ,so he seized Abed's 
Scott's Bible, much to the consternation of Dame 
Scofield, who immediately redeemed it with her last 
farthing much to Abed's disgust. 

Meanwhile business enterprises were creat- 

29 



ing problems of capital and labor in Stamford; as 
early as 1684 Joshua Hoyt was privileged to install 
a saw-mill and "take timber anywhere between Five 
Mile River and Pine Brook, provided he first served 
Stamford buyers before any other customers, at six 
pence per 100 feet less than he charged others." 
How interesting we find these old money values, 
since "money talks"! In 1695 the annals show that 
the town, no longer fearful of Indian massacres, 
"by outcry doth sell ye fort gates, ye wheel of ye 
great guns and all ye wood belonging to ye great 
guns to Nathaniel Cross and Jonathan Holly for 
five shillings six pence;" and again we find recorded, 
"the old school house built of ye remains of ye old 
meeting house sold 1690 by public outcry for 
twenty shillings six pence," the town reserving "ye 
dore hinges and flores." Remember, too, that there 
was a fine of fourteen shillings for not sending 
children to school at an early age. Reading and 
writing and divine law and gospel were compulsory, 
and there being no papers, magazines or books to 
be had for love or money, the town did the next 
best thing to foster literary pursuits; it printed the 
laws of the State and circulated them freely, and 
many a young hopeful first learned to spell in legal 
terms. 

30 







t 






x^: 










Pine Tree 
Shilling 



Although the mother country zealously 
guarded the prerogative to coin money, the earliest 
record of American coinage starts in Boston where 
John Hull, silversmith, busied himself turning out 
the first American currency which was called the 
Pine Tree Coinage. This coin really filled a serious 
want for all the colonists because the rate of barter 
had not been regulated. We can hardly conceive 
of the serious handicap to trade occasioned by so 
unstable a regime in money matters. The Pine Tree 
shilling shows a very conventional tree encircled by 
a double ring. The design was intended to frustrate 
the common practice of ''clipping." The Pine Tree 
coins raised many a protest in England. When Sir 
Thomas Temple, a friend of the colonists, presented 
a Pine Tree shilling to Charles II, it is said that he 
became very angry and was only made to laugh by 
the diplomatic prevarication that the pine tree was 
the colonists' conception of the Royal Oak that had 
saved his Majesty's life, and thus befooled, Charles 
laughingly declared his American subjects ''honest 
dogs." On account of this attitude at Court, John 
Hull was clever enough to date every Pine Tree 
shilling 1652, although he struck them in enormous 
quantities until 1688, when Governor Andros 
stopped the mint. All New England rang with the 

31 



delightful romance of Mistress Hull's marriage to 
Judge Samuel Sewell, founder of Newbury, Massa- 
chusetts, and Stamford gossips loved the story. 
John Hull, the father of the buxom bride, having 
promised as her dowry her weight in Pine Tree 
shillings, after the ceremony steel "yards" were 
brought into the house, and the blushing bride was 
seated in one, while in the other a tub was heaped 
with the shining silver shillings until they balanced, 
amid the cheers and merrymaking of the guests. 

The colonists had to hoard their English 
money for imports, but soon found that peltry had 
an intrinsic value and was accepted abroad; so 
trapping became a lucrative industry with the men 
of Wethersfield. Corn, wheat, rye and barley were 
current among themselves, while the Indian's wam- 
pum still made small change; and it was published 
by the authorities "likewise maskett balletts of a 
full boare shall pass current for a farthing a piece." 
But it was the opening up of trade with the West 
Indies that brought plenty of Spanish silver into 
Stamford. Stamford became an open port of entry 
of considerable importance in those days. The great 
mass of specie which was carried to Europe by the 
Spanish treasure fleets after the opening of the 
famous Potosi silver mines, was the coveted prize 

32 



of the English and Dutch buccaneers who used 
every device to capture a share by the way. On 
account of the scarcity of small coin, it soon became 
a common practice to "clip" the large silver pieces 
to make change; but this custom had to be checked 
by law, because again the Yankee ingenuity came 
to the fore, and actually devised a way to clip a coin 
into five quarters. To-day coins are manufactured 
in such a way that they cannot be clipped without 
detection. The designs are put on two sides and 
corrugations or lettering on the edges, and muti- 
lated coins do not pass. 

As an early hint of big business we learn 
that a seventy-ton vessel built in Stamford was sold 
to Jonathan Selleck in 1691. Huntington's History 
states that the Earl of Bellomont reports to the 
Great London Trading Company, "There's a town 
called Stamford in the Connecticut colony, on the 
borders of this province, where one Major Selleck 
lives who has a warehouse close to the sea that runs 
between the mainland and Nassau (Long Island). 
The man does us great mischief with his warehouse, 
for he receives abundance of goods from our ves- 
sels and the merchants afterward take their oppor- 
tunity of running them into this town. Major Sel- 
leck received at least £10,000 of treasure and East 



33 



India goods bought by one Clark from Kidd's sloop 
and lodged with Selleck." In 1688 the Town offi- 
cials called to account one Joseph Arnold to give a 
reason for his "rigging up a brigantine" hinting 
suspiciously of piracy and the mysteries of nefarious 
navigation. 

In 1694 specie had become so scarce that no 
one was allowed to take more than £5 abroad for 
"necessary expenses," and we smile at the humor- 
ous side of starting to Europe with a limit of $25. 
The same year a new coin began to be circulated 
bearing the inscription, "God preserve New Eng- 
land." 

The famous Madame Knight's much-quoted 
epistle states that in Connecticut there were four 
prices, "pay," "pay as money," "money," and 
"trusting." The merchant would ask the buyer 
how he would pay before he fixed the price. (It is 
done in a little subtler manner nowadays.) "Pay" 
was barter at rates fixed by the Colonial Governor. 
"Money" was Spanish coin or Pine Tree shillings 
with wampum for small change. "Pay as money" 
was barter currency at prices one-third less than 
government rates, and "trusting" was an inflated 
price according to time of trust. So we find a six- 
penny knife cost twelve pence in "pay," eight 

34 







X, 



T'^ 



^y 




*^^m«*a**^', 






New England 
Token, l694 



pence in "pay as money" and six pence in coin. 
Paper money began to complicate matters. Notes 
on private banks were circulated freely by private 
persons and while paper money immediately be- 
came popular, it was converted into specie with 
great difficulty. The first private bank organized 
in Massachusetts Bay in 1681, but did not receive 
a grant from the Colonial Government of Massa- 
chusetts until 1686, and then the latter excused it- 
self for granting it by publishing an explanation 
about "the great decay of trade, obstructions to 
manufacture and commerce in this country and 
multiplicity of debts and suits thereupon, princi- 
pally occasioned by the scarcity of coin." Can the 
mind trained to think in terms of quarters and dol- 
lars conceive of these harrassing business condi- 
tions ? We sympathize with our pioneer forefathers 
in their heroic efforts to blaze the trail of American 
civilization and progress, and we have expended 
much noble sentiment in picturing their struggles 
with wild beasts, savage treachery, physical hard- 
ships, etc., but it never seems to have occurred to 
us to marvel that they built up their fortunes amid 
business conditions that seem to us hopeless, and 
this because the very foundation of business was 
laid on the shifting sands of unstandardized money. 

35 



And imagine an ever-increasing trade and com- 
merce and inventive genius laying the foundation 
of to-day's big industries and manufactures in spite 
of such monetary conditions ! 

In 1714 there was made in Boston the first 
attempt to organize a Bank of Credit that would be 
more than ''headquarters to issue notes." It was to 
be founded on land securities and £300,000 was 
readily subscribed and the real estate actually made 
over to the bank, and the bank was "monstrous 
popular" until it failed, as all land banks fail, sim- 
ply because land is not convertible into specie at 
short notice. Our neighbor, New London, estab- 
lished a Society for Trade and Commerce in 1732, 
but it was suppressed for illegality soon after. 

Stamford's story threads itself through one 
hundred years of prosperous agriculture and ma- 
rine commerce, then the French and Indian Wars 
loom up. In the winter of 1757-58 there were two 
hundred and fifty officers and soldiers (seventeen 
women and nine children) of a Highland Scotch 
Regiment quartered in Stamford at the expense of 
the town. The bill amounted to £369, l3s., 4>4d. 
The record states that "they were, at the cost of the 
town, provided with house and room, bedding, fire- 
wood and candles." A goodly sum to be drawn 

36 



from the town treasury, and it would be interesting 
to know where the town hid its treasure and how. 
The Highlanders marched on to fight against the 
French and Indians, and the little town is thrown 
into hysterical excitement when the Stamford boys 
leave for Ticonderoga. After the capture of Quebec 
by General Wolfe, forces began to work towards 
the culmination of our Revolution. England was 
continually interfering to regulate our money, 
which aggravation was cited as one of the prime 
factors in precipitating our rebellion. Coins sprang 
into use, no one knew whence. Collectors prize the 
coins of the Revolutionary period which bear 
humorous legends such as, "Mind your business" 
and ''Cut your way through," etc. 

In 1765 the patriot and scholar, Dr. Noah 
Welles, aroused the citizens with dramatic protests 
against England's tyranny in the Stamp Act which 
was another factor for rebellion. It was Dr. Noah 
Welles who also started the subscription for pur- 
chasing a church bell to replace the primitive 
"drom" which called the people to prayer. At the 
commencement of the Revolution, Stamford was 
only sixteenth in regards to population among Con- 
necticut's sixty-seven towns, but her Grand List 
was £34,078, 8s., bespeaking her splendid efforts 

37 



and attainments; and as a token of the industry and 
thrift of the Stamford people today, a statement was 
published to the eflfect that in the year 1916, the 
people had saved $2,000,000. 

But we were dreaming of the past! 

After our independence was declared, 
Joseph Hoyt of Stamford enlisted about thirty men 
and made a journey to New York to aid in defense 
if necessary. He was gone eight days. The bill 
is worth commemorating as compared with what 
modern slang calls ''graft." 

Whole pay for men's time £20 8 4 
Cash expended by Capt. Hoyt on the 

march 3 

Cash expended by Lieut. Webb 
Cash expended by Lieut. Ezra Lockwood 

Sloop from New York to Stamford 2 

Capt. Hoyt's horse hire 

Total £28 8 4 

Paper money issued by the American Con- 
gress during the Revolution, called Continental 
money, was printed in amounts so vast that it be- 
came utterly distrusted, and it depreciated until 
every man in Stamford used the by-word "not 
worth a continental." But just the same the good 
people of Stamford were marrying and giving in 

38 



12 





17 





6 





11 


9 


12 


6 



marriage, because as Buckle in his History of Civili- 
zation points out, ''Marriage depends solely on the 
price of wheat." We who enjoy to-day a fixed 
standardized currency, little dream what the young 
Republic suffered in endeavoring to repay its debts 
for armies and ammunition and supplies with as yet 
no systematized means for direct taxation to fill its 
coffers. They had to look to the colonies to col- 
lect their own taxes, and some, Rhode Island for in- 
stance, flatly refused to pay, claiming exemption 
on account of "damages to them done by the war." 
The colonies all began issuing paper money on their 
own account, but by 1777 paper money had come 
to such a state of depreciation that Congress had 
to recommend that the States make no more; 
nevertheless paper money increased with fresh 
issues in enormous quantities, until, in 1778, the 
Government declared that a paper dollar was not 
worth more than five cents. In 1779 it fell to two 
and one-half cents and prices rose enormously. A 
pair of shoes sold for $100, flour at £100 per cwt., 
beef at 22s. 6d. per pound, salt 75 cents a bushel, 
rum £25 per gallon, sugar £200 per cwt. To the 
landlord these conditions meant that he virtually 
presented his tenant with his estate, for ''the rent 
from 4,000 acres could not purchase twenty barrels 



39 



of corn," so that by 1780 trade had returned to 
barter. There would have resulted untold suffer- 
ing, seeing there was such a scarcity of specie, 
except that the country was really prosperous and 
there was an abudance of all products, and after 
all, all the treasure of the world is still here and the 
supply infinite. Only when money is plentiful 
prices are low, and when money seems scarce to 
human limitations prices are high. Thus we arrive 
at the basic principle, 'The value of money is 
exactly inverse to its quantity." 

This era of our town and country is perhaps 
the most intensely interesting in its relation to cur- 
rency and finance. The First National Bank of 
the United States was incorporated in 1780, but it 
was hardly more than a subscription of private 
funds to feed the starving soldiers, and it closed in 
1784. 

Historically, "deposits began as specie left 
with trusted friends upon the occasion of wars or 
travels," and our retrospective musings love to 
dwell upon the romantic tales of the old Venetian 
and Florentine bankers in the early Renaissance 
period, or the stories of the Goldsmiths of London 
in the Seventeenth Century. In oldest traditions of 
mediaeval times the banker was the confidential 



40 



friend and advisor of the business men, who thus 
patronized him, and this relationship has but been 
emphasized in modern times. But still more an- 
ciently the Mosaic records refer to Abraham's 
sheckels of silver and to the practice of usury as an 
offense, and it has been said of Pharoah's daughter 
that she ''gained a little prophet from the rushes on 
the bank." There are nine banks in the United 
States now in existence which were instituted in 
the Eighteenth Century. Of these there were two 
in Connecticut, two in New York, two in Massa- 
chusetts, one in Pennsylvania, one in Delaware and 
one in Maryland. And yet did you ever think that 
the ethical basis of banking is not founded upon 
specie, but upon confidence on the part of the 
people and ''good will" on the part of the bank? 

In 1781 a National bank on a sound basis 
was proposed by Robert Morris and opened in 1 782 
as the Bank of North America in Philadelphia. 
About this time Alexander Hamilton and Morris 
were advancing their views and measures for solv- 
ing currency problems, and the decimal basis was 
adopted for coinage. Nine years later the Federal 
Mint was established in Philadelphia and the dollar 
made the monetary unit. "One silver dollar con- 
tained 371.25 grains pure silver, one gold dollar 

41 



contained 24.75 pure gold. An Eagle was ^10 in 
gold, with its halves and quarters in gold. The 
silver dollar had its half, quarter, dime and one-half 
dime in silver and all full legal tender." The cent 
;^1/100 and ^ cent were coined in copper. But this 
did not early aflfect the country and our town con- 
ditions as might appear, because according to Pro- 
fessor Taussig, this system was never put into prac- 
tice until after the Civil War, and the value of mer- 
chandise was still universally quoted in shillings 
and six pences. Free coinage made untold trouble; 
for, while the mint was under obligation to coin for 
whoever brought gold or silver, the shrewd finan- 
ciers found they could gain 1 % by having the Span- 
ish dollars recast, and the mint was kept busy day 
and night for the benefit of the "money changers 
in the temple." Then, too, the exchange expert 
found he could get a premium by sending our gold 
and silver into foreign countries. This was done to 
such an extent that in 1793 our country was left 
with a currency of foreign coins of every descrip- 
tion, and Congress had to announce that they 
would only be accepted for three years longer when 
they must be redeemed at the mint. But not until 
long after the Civil War did foreign coins disappear 
in the melting pot. There are many men living in 



42 





Connecticut 
Cent, 1787 



Stamford who remember Spanish and English 
pieces and the old Mexican dollars. Mexico has the 
distinction of being the only country that ever cast 
money and therefore they were called Mexican cast 
dollars. 

Stamford men in times of peace began to 
float new enterprises. The same year that the mint 
was established, 1791, John Holly and William 
Fitch erected a dam and flouring mill, and six years 
later the Stamford Manufacturing Company was 
instituted at the Cove Mills at the mouth of the 
Noroton River, and for decades this humble manu- 
factory of dye stuflfs was the only one of its kind in 
the world. It is a matter of congratulation that it 
is still doing business and big business today. 

In 1788 a coin known as the Connecticut 
cent was being circulated and it seems to be a joke 
among numismaticians, for even the report of the 
secretary from the mint says of it, "The obverse 
and reverse dies of the Connecticut cent are too 
numerous to mention, there being no less than 164 
of the former and 84 of the latter." In 1700 Con- 
necticut had twenty-seven towns. In 1 800 she had 
one hundred and eighteen, but Stamford had grown 
from a little scattered settlement to an important 
center of 4465 souls, with even a greater increase in 

43 



material wealth, while the advance in social well- 
being and culture were still more marked. Her 
people were literally coining wealth from their in- 
dustries, handicrafts and products of the soil. Dur- 
ing the war of 1812, when a company of Stamford 
boys were called out and encamped awaiting orders 
for defense on Shippan Point, as compared to a 
soldier's allowance of ^13 per month to-day, we 
learn that the Government allowed each man 
twenty cents per day and the Lieutenant sixty cents 
per day. 

The establishment of the mint and the stan- 
dardizing of our money began at once to put new 
life into trade and put the United States for the 
first time in its history on a safe currency basis. 
But its struggles and vicissitudes during the period 
of reconstruction were long and severe. So baffling 
to human wisdom seemed its many-sided problem, 
that in 1866 the Powers that Be were forced to 
confess their reliance on Supreme Wisdom in the 
motto put forth on our dollar, "In God We Trust," 
to which the worldly-wise immediately added, "all 
others cash." 

Coinage under Government regulations 
soon made its impress upon money and markets, 
but the standards and weights of gold and silver 

44 



were constantly subject to changes; however, the 
balance was just getting well regulated when the 
discovery of the big gold mines in '48 came to 
demoralize all values. Soon the private coinage of 
this new gold began to add confusion worse con- 
founded, and it was found that gold had been 
coined by private concerns to the value of $51,000,- 
000, so that by 1864 the Government was com- 
pelled to prohibit , free coinage, and compromised 
by the establishment of the mint in San Francisco. 
In 1857 nickel came into use. In reviewing the 
evolution of coins as we dream together of silver 
and gold, we are reminded that while the Lydians 
were believed to have made coins 1200 B. C, it is 
known that the Chinese were coining square 
bronze pieces 1 120 B. C. The Chinese have an un- 
interrupted coinage for forty-one centuries. While 
coins have been made of wood, leather, shells 
and metals, the Chinese are without doubt the only 
nation ingenious enough to devise coins of porce- 
lain. Their common ''cash," a round bronze coin 
with a square hole in the middle, is of such small 
value that it takes one thousand of them to make 
$\; but the Japanese have a small coin they call 
1/100, of which 7,000 equal one Spanish dollar, and 
it takes a caribou cart to carry around $S worth. 

45 



The most valuable coin which the Japanese have is 
the golden oban; it is 3>^x4 inches and worth $75. 
Japan gives a death sentence to anyone taking an 
oban out of Japan. The oldest coins extant are 
placed at 800 years B. C, but the oldest coin in the 
collection of our mint is an Aegean coin placed at 
700 B. C, by archaeologists, although the mint 
owns a shekel of Israel of which neither the date nor 
the value can be affixed. It is priceless to a collector. 
Coins were never dated until after the Fifteenth 
Century. The mint also owns the "Widow's Mite," 
the tiniest coin in the world, only 3/10 of an inch in 
diameter. It is really a Samarian lepton and it was 
found by Dr. Barclay, long a resident of Jerusalem, 
among some rubbish of the Temple grounds and 
presented to this Government. A unique coin in 
the mint's collection is a Roman silver piece bear- 
ing a portrait of Augustus Caesar with the label, 
"The Son of God." No wonder the question arose 
as to whom the Jews should pay tribute, and the 
declaration, "Render unto Caesar the things that 
are Caesar's." 

The year 1829 saw the first Stamford news- 
paper. It was a little weekly sheet called the "Sen- 
tinel," but later the name was changed to the "Advo- 
cate," and for nearly a century this newspaper has 

46 



weathered the storms and vicissitudes of troublous 
as well as prosperous times and is read all over the 
State to-day. 

In 1831-3 Stamford's ship canal was ex- 
tended up into the very center of the village, even 
to the threshold of the Meeting House. This meant 
a great impetus to trade. A schooner "James Star" 
set out with a full cargo for the West Indies and 
returned in six weeks with fruit, copper, dye- 
woods, etc., and a quaint edition of "The Sentinel" 
publishes the Editor's stilted thanks to the Captain 
for a gift of pineapples. 

While the whole world was feeling the 
effects of the Asiatic cholera epidemic in 1832, and 
New York was depressed with a trio of disasters, 
two devastating conflagrations and the most far- 
reaching financial panic of the century, Stamford 
was quietly and steadily forging ahead and doing 
good business; and it is impossible to do good busi- 
ness without making money; (and there is no evil 
in money, the love of money is the root). In this 
revery of current events and currency we note that 
the Stamford Foundry had just begun business and 
it is still holding its own to-day. Prosperity and 
advancement promoted the first bank, known as 
the Old Stamford Bank, chartered by the State in 

47 



1834, incorporated with a capital of $100,000, on 
condition that the bank should pay a bonus of 
$5,000 to the Wesleyan University of Middletown 
in two instalments. There were 363 subscribers of 
which 84 were Stamford residents. 

The steamboat had puffed its noisy way into 
the harbor, in the midst of a wild demonstration of 
joy from the crowds on Shippan's bluif ; the chan- 
nels had been deepened by Government money; a 
proposition to incorporate Stamford Borough had 
produced a census enumerating ninety-two fami- 
lies; inhabitants, 663; white males, 354; white 
females, 283; free colored males, 10; free colored 
females, 14, and 2 slaves. 

Thus the silver thread of our story brings us 
to Stamford's Two Hundredth Anniversary, a 
period rife with promise of great expansion, hast- 
ened by a public celebration. The railroad and 
passenger trains soon made their triumphal entry. 
The ''Advocate" in a contemporary issue tells of 
the advent of the first locomotive, as follows: 
"Animals of every description went careering 
round the fields, sniffing the air in terror, and bipeds 
of every size, condition and color set off at full run 
for the railroad depot. In a few minutes the cause 
of all the commotion appeared in the shape of a 

48 




Hff^' 



^~'~ liMO III " W i^ U J^ 



A Colonist's 
Homestead 



locomotive puffing off the steam and screaming 
with its so-called whistle at a terrible rate." Very 
soon the road made the phenomenal schedule of 
three trains daily all the way from New Haven to 
New York City and back the same day. The year 
1844 ushered in the telegraph and some years later 
the daring project of cabling the Atlantic was pro- 
jected, and we feel a sense of proud ownership, in 
that the cables are made to-day in Stamford. The 
period of 1848-50 is one of great import to our 
Nation. It opened our Golden Age with Sutton's 
discovery of gold in his mill-race in California, and 
these extraordinary gold mines were opened up 
coincidentally with gold mines in Australia, and 
stories were being told at Stamford hearthstones 
of the gold fever and the "forty-niners." Gold be- 
came the basis of the world's circulating medium; 
the basis of the money system of all civilized 
nations to-day is gold. Back in the fifties the annual 
gold supply rose from ten million to one hundred 
and twenty-five million dollars and continued at 
this rate for fifty years. During the twenty-five 
years from 1850 to 1875 as much gold was pro- 
duced and added to the world's stock as had been 
produced during three and a half centuries from 
1492 to 1850. Later more gold came to cheapen 

49 



money by the opening of mines in South Africa, 
The Transvaal, where reefs were found of great 
extent. However, the United States furnishes 
about one-third of all the gold product of the world. 
That was a period of world-wide innovation. As 
in a dream thought reverts to the primitive ways 
and means which were fast being supplemented 
with improvements. Fancy the risks and delays 
and loss of mail matter under the old regime! Not 
until 1851, the year that the Stamford Savings 
Bank was instituted, were postage stamps used in 
America, making radical changes in all business. 
In I8l6 the cost of carrying a bit of paper for thirty 
miles had been six cents, eighty miles, ten cents; one 
hundred and fifty miles, twelve and a half cents; 
four hundred miles, eighteen and three-quarter 
cents; and over four hundred miles, twenty-five 
cents. In 1846 it had cost ten cents to send a letter 
from Stamford to Hartford by the lumbering old 
stage coach, and coincident with this state of affairs 
there is a quaint record to the effect that the village 
editor who had received seventy-five cents for a 
six months' subscription in Illinois, complains in a 
published statement, "that three letters from said 
subscriber changing his address had already swal- 
lowed up the sum total at first received and a fourth 

50 



letter is at the post office, which he vehemently de- 
clares he shall not release and thereby place the 
extra cost as well as the papers to the account of 
profit and loss." 

It was at this period that Stamford's indus- 
trial and inventive genius fathered the Camphor 
and Wax Company at Glenbrook; the Woolen 
Mills succeeded the old Rippowam Iron Works; a 
shoe factory sprang into being at Long Ridge, and 
a hat "shop" started business. Rows of brick stores 
and tenement houses made work for artisans 
and tradesmen. The Stamford Gas and Light 
Company was organized and in 1855 the streets 
were lighted by gas. The trans-Atlantic cable be- 
gan to affect business as early as 1858. The popu- 
lation of the Borough gained 133% and that of the 
entire town 42%, but its wealth increased four fold. 
The trains were now making thirteen trips daily 
to New York, and the New Canaan branch was pro- 
jected. Religious thought had expanded as new- 
comers arrived with the steamboat and the steam 
cars, and creeds of many denominations were crys- 
tallizing in handsome edifices. Increase in the 
number of banks throughout the country brought 
into being the New York Clearing House, estab- 
lished in 1853. In New England the Suffolk Bank 

51 



was the agency through which notes were cleared, 
and their system is known to-day as the Suffolk 
Bank System. 

The fermentation and general unrest of this 
period culminated in the darkest tragedy of our 
Nation's history, the Civil War, a cloud which had 
no silver lining. Above the paralysing effects of 
loss and grief and embitterment, for war is hate and 
hate is hell, trade and business were stunned. The 
paper money of the Southern Confederacy depre- 
ciated until it was finally deemed void. After the 
battle of Gettysburg the premium on gold went 
'way down, but rose just as high after the dreadful 
summer of 1864. Prices now were double what 
they had been in '61, so the specie premium rose. 
In July 1864, a dollar of gold sold for $2.85 in 
paper. During these anxious years paper circu- 
lated freely everywhere except in California where 
gold was preferred. 

During the reconstructionary years that fol- 
lowed, Stamford kept quietly and busily ''sawing 
wood," or shall we say, carving nutmegs? 

In 1870, the Yale & Towne Manufacturing 
Company began making the locks that made it 
famous. Later the typewriter was given to the 
business world, and typewriters are made in Stam- 

52 



ford. Still another four years saw the telephone 
eliminating distance. Improvements once consid- 
ered impossible were effected for the printing 
presses and power looms. July 4th of the next 
year saw the organization of the Water Company 
which has kept pace with progress to the extent that 
to-day it is capable of supplying twice the demand 
made upon it. Expansion began to change the 
topography of the village so that outlying fields of 
Stamford found themselves in the heart of the 
town. No prophet or seer has ever been able to 
predict precisely in which direction a town will ex- 
pand. A farmer who owned a "potato patch" in 
the offskirts in his youth, in middle age found a 
city surrounding it and was paid by the city what 
seemed to him a fortune. When he presented the 
check to the home bank they asked if he wished to 
deposit it or cash it. He answered to the effect that 
he didn't trust banks and wanted the cash. The 
cashier began counting out more money than he 
dreamed existed, and as the hundreds rose into the 
thousands his eyes began to fairly bulge. It stag- 
gered him and he whispered hoarsely, ''Mr. Bank 
President, jes' put it all back and keep it for me, and 
give me $5." 

The crowding events concurrent with our 

S3 



currency bring our retrospective musings to Stam- 
ford's Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary, 
when her ever increasing population and wealth 
and her steadily expanding interests and prosper- 
ity called for another Banking Institution and The 
Stamford Trust Company was born. The first 
Trust Company in this country had been created 
in Philadelphia as early as 1809, and the second in 
New York in 1822, proving so effectually their 
value to the business world, that to-day there are 
more than 25,000 Trust Companies with resources 
exceeding four and a half billion dollars. The 
Stamford Trust Company was chartered by the 
Legislature June 11, 1889, and opened its doors 
July 1, 1891. Its first home was the site where the 
Rev. John Bishop lived and prepared his sermons 
nearly two hundred and fifty years before, and The 
Trust Company occupied this site for twenty-three 
years. The charter authorized the institution, in 
addition to a general banking business, to receive 
deposits subject to check and allow interest on sav- 
ings accounts, loan money on approved security, to 
act as executor, administrator, trustee, assignee, 
guardian or receiver. The Stamford Trust Com- 
pany is also in a position to guarantee the safety, 
by the year or the month, from fire or burglary, of 

54 






w 



-- 1 



■**«*^ ^;xys*^^ 



,^,^„»,-r w * jMP' m i^t 



ri^j**^^^ . 



1(5 



ifiPfF^yi^iPl 






lif*. 



r 



H -A 



First Home of the 
Stamford Trust Company 



securities, plate, jewelry, papers and valuables and 
it insures not only safety but complete privacy. It 
has been fulfilling acceptably for twenty-five years 
its comprehensive mission in the community. Time 
was when the Lord of the Manor had his strong box 
at the foot of his bed of state and his sword lay 
upon it. Museums show us such treasure-coffers 
of incomparable craft work. The idea of the mod- 
ernly equipped safety vaults is to lay up treasures 
where moth and rust do not corrupt and where 
thieves cannot break through and steal. Fear of 
loss has haunted every possessor of treasure, until 
it would seem that man no longer possessed his 
treasure, but the treasure virtually possessed him. 
The value of treasure is not always in coin of the 
realm, but more often in the perishable medium of 
paper, easily worn, torn, lost or burned; therefore 
it necessitates fire-proof protection. While Stam- 
ford justly points with pride to her unique position 
in the World of Finance, that of never hav- 
ing had a bank failure, nor a panic, nor has any- 
one ever lost a dollar that was deposited in a Stam- 
ford bank, still Stamford has been the theatre of 
many disastrous fires, and papers worth many times 
their weight in gold have been reduced to ashes. 
In 1914 the Stamford Trust Company began the 

55 



erection of its present beautiful home. Its policy 
has always been ''the best," therefore the pure 
Grecian motif in its architecture; nor has any 
building material surpassed the white marble with 
which the edifice is constructed. While The Stam- 
ford Trust Company has been active through the 
past quarter century, Stamford's apotheosis has 
occurred. She has trebled her population and 
quadrupled her wealth. The village has become a 
city. The splendid water system has been insti- 
tuted. Seventy miles of streets have been paved 
and fine roads built, sewerage established and the 
farthest outlying district electrically lighted. There 
is a new railroad station and there are electric 
trains on a four-track road every hour, and mails 
as often. The trolleys have brought remote dis- 
tricts into touch with the center of activity, and the 
telephone has simplified living. Magnificent up- 
to-date buildings, public and private, have kept the 
hammers of industry busy, while the whirring 
wheels of progress hum in various important fac- 
tories. An elegant new Federal Building will 
shortly house the Post Office Department. The 
Fire Department has been entirely motorized and 
the great new fire station is the delight of the 
stranger. The beautiful Public Library would be an 

56 



ornament to any city, while the great Town Hall 
dominates Stamford's very heart, 'The Square." 
There are thirty-two churches to testify to Stam- 
ford's religious founding. There are excellent pub- 
lic schools and high school, besides several impor- 
tant private schools, schools of music and dancing, 
and two business colleges. The Y. M. C. A. has a 
charming and satisfying home, practically the best 
equipped club house in the town. There are eighty- 
six organizations and fraternities, many owning 
their own fine buildings and clubhouses. There are 
city parks and pleasure grounds, theatres and 
places of amusement, beautiful homes and grand 
estates. Stamford has a large armory and a new 
modern hospital and a delightful new hotel. She 
offers factory sites between the steamboat land- 
ings and the railroad station, bespeaking unequalled 
transportation facilities to the biggest market in 
the world. She offers home sites on picturesque 
bluffs that are washed by the Sound's gentle tides, 
or aerie hilltops with rare rural pictures at every 
vista. At the rate of Stamford's advancement our 
dream and prophecy foresees a great future, a won- 
derful golden future. But lo! the silver bands upon 
the horizon give place to gold with promise of the 
dawn, the dawn of Stamford's greatest era of un- 



57 



precedented prosperity and opportunity. Lo! the 
sun in full orbed glory now wraps Stamford's spires 
in cloth of gold! Our revery ceases. The com- 
mand was, "Set ye up way marks," and this quar- 
ter century mile-stone is set up reverentially, with 
the deeper import of a celebration; which import is 
to foster the community spirit, and to quicken a 
sense of love and loyalty for the home institutions 
and for "Stamford, My Home." 




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